


Introduction to Basic Social Interactions, Semester 1

by Project0506



Series: Introduction to Basic Social Interactions [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 08:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It turns out, a complete lack of basic social know-how may just be a Holmes genetic trait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It started with the stoplights.

Alright, no. It probably started a good deal earlier than that, but the stoplights were the first thing he noticed. After all, reds were bloody inconvenient when you were late and wasn’t it just his luck that he would hit all greens on the way in to the station one morning.

And on the way back one very late night.

And every morning and late night/early morning after.

Greg Lestrade is no one’s fool, and has never been oblivious a day in his life. It only took him a week to notice because statistically, something had to go right for him every once in a while. Past a week though, and it was frankly ridiculous. It was very unlikely that every stoplight in the greater London area suddenly decided that his car was top priority.

So yes, he first noticed the stoplights, but he didn’t bring it up. The cameras though, were pushing it.

Greg trudges up the stairs to his flat, wellingtons squelching where he’s worn a hole in them somewhere. His socks are damp and plastered to his feet and he really hates that. He peels them off and leaves them, with his shirt and trousers, over the radiator to dry. He shuffles over to the window to shut the curtain, deciding to be nice and not offend the neighbours with the sight of his pants and pale legs when he notices the traffic camera on the corner is decidedly not watching the traffic. Greg sighs.

He picks up the phone, rubbing the dust that comes away between his fingers with a grimace. God, he needs to clean this dump. He listens to the dial tone for a long stretch of seconds before heaving another sigh. “Holmes,” he groans. “Those have to go.”

There is an even longer stretch before the phone clicks, and it somehow sounds sheepish. “Good evening Detective Inspector,” comes the familiar cultured tone in his ear. “What seems-“

“The camera, Holmes. That’s invasion of privacy.”

Another pause, and on the other end Mycroft Holmes clears his throat. “Right then, that’ll be handled. Goodnight Detective Inspector.” Outside the camera turns back to watch the road, and Greg closes his window.

God save him from Holmes men, or he’ll be hospitalized for bloody ulcers.


	2. Chapter 2

Detective Inspectors don’t make all that much. Their paycheck isn’t nearly as bad as most other government workers but it isn’t much to brag about. Apparently that bit of data was something the judge forgot to consider when awarding Amelia rights to everything up to and possibly including his kidneys. It wouldn’t be so bad, he thinks, if bleeding him dry came with the benefit of him seeing his boys once every so often. But apparently he’s a danger and his job’s a danger and Amelia is concerned that being associated with him puts the boys in danger.

  
(She had shown up in court with a very literal list of dates and times and cases where Greg was injured, nearly injured, had to work too much to pay attention to her and the boys. Throughout the litany of accusations Greg couldn’t help but think two independent, but equally nasty thoughts. The first was she knew bloody well he was a policeman when she married him, what the hell did she think he’d do all day? If she wanted an excuse to leave him for the man she’d been seeing on the side for the better part of a year, she certainly should have been able to come up with a better excuse than ‘a policeman’s job is too dangerous’. The second thought was that a lot of these cases were ones that involved Sherlock somehow. It’s probably not coincidence.)

  
Epistle abbreviated: normal Detective Inspectors’ paychecks don’t stretch all that far. After alimony, Greg’s stretches quite a bit less than most.

  
So when he checks his bank account and realizes that he has a grand total of £1.50 less at the end of the month than he did at the beginning, he knows something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.

  
The next time he goes to the shops, the chip and pin machine applies a 99.98% discount on his groceries and Greg resists the urge to crouch, bury his face in his knees and moan.

  
“This is bribery, long and short,” he informs his powered-off mobile. “And last I checked that was still illegal.” There is no response, but he honestly wasn’t expecting one. He runs his hands viciously through his hair before dropping them to his lap. He lets his forehead slump against the steering wheel of his car and bangs it a couple of times, before starting it and pulling out of the parking lot.

  
“Look,” he says finally, breezing through the next stoplight that had turned yellow, but changed its mind and went back to green. “You don’t have do this. I’m keeping an eye on Sherlock regardless of whether or not you give me ‘benefits’, alright?” He’s pulling up in front of his flat before there is a click and a “Thank you.”

  
The voice the elder Holmes brother used was strange, but he was gone before Greg had a chance to analyze it.


	3. Chapter 3

There is a Haitian lady in his flat dusting his things when he gets home.

He has A-Levels in French but fuck if he’s used a word of it since 7th year. And whatever her dialect is, it’s absolutely nothing like Mme Moriau’s. In fact, his dear old teacher would probably be spinning in her grave at the pathetic attempt at communication going on his entryway.

This lady speaks a grand total of maybe 50 words of English, not enough to tell him how she got in, but he knows her name is Nancy and she’s here because something something something Holmes and that’s about all he really needs.

He storms off to shower and he dresses. His shirts and trousers have been starched to perfection, just enough stiffness about the collar to display a sense of casualness. It’s precisely the way he likes them and he feels an irrational anger. She’s rounded up all his take-out boxes and emptied his dustbin. He feels irrationally ashamed, and an equally irrational desire to have known someone was coming so he could have tidied up a bit.

There’s a lot of irrationality going on with him today.

He pays Nancy himself, insisting when she tries to refuse. When he finally shuffles her out of his flat he takes a moment to wad all his clothes up into wrinkled messes, before putting on the most-crumpled of them.

Today’s The Anniversary and he feels like shit and very much wants to look like shit, thanks.

There’s a game on at the pub but Greg doesn’t give a shit. He buys his own rounds and downs them like water and about an hour in stops caring about what exactly he’s drinking. He’s not going in to work tomorrow. He tried that once a ways back, going in the morning after The Anniversary. It was politely insinuated that maybe he should take some time off until he stopped being an arsehole to everyone. These days he just gets wasted and spends the following 24 hours in as much physical misery as he is emotionally. Everyone knows to leave him alone on The Anniversary. Since John, even Sherlock.

(And how is his present life divided into Before John and Since John? Since John has seen far less stress migraines, that’s for bloody sure, and his graying slowed down considerably. All bloody hail Saint John. He tips a glass in salute for the poor bastard that didn’t know what he was in for when he moved in with a Holmes.)

Well, he corrects himself, almost everyone knows to leave him alone on The Anniversary.

Mycroft has the kind of casual look that is clear was very carefully designed and coached. He sticks out like a bum at a yacht club. Greg eyes him balefully. “Whaddya want?” he says, and gestures for another round of whatever he had last. It was disgusting, absolutely vile if he was honest, but burned like a bitch. He’s three sheets to the wind and his common sense packed it in hours ago.

“It is quite amusing that you believe I always want something,” Holmes says, with that meaningless half-smile and what the fuck is he smiling about? Yeah, Greg knows he’s the poster child for misplaced aggression. “I’m simply here because I wanted to be.”

“Yeah, ok, no.” Greg says, and he doesn’t give too shits on how eloquent, or not, that was. “Look. Don’t take this personal or nothing. But I don’t want you to be here. Not tonight. Could you bugger off?”

  
The Anniversary is the day Greg reminds himself he’s a completely shitty human being, so much that he fucks up everything around him. Today’s the day Amelia figured out what a fuck up he was and made a break for it before he could drag her and the boys down with him. Today’s the day Greg remembers everything he screwed up, broke, ruined and every way he was just plain shit. He doesn’t want to feel better, doesn’t want friends cheering him up and sure, he’s got nothing against Mycroft Holmes but right now he wants to wallow and he can’t wallow if he’s admiring the cut on the arsehole in front of him. So the arsehole has to go, and he can get back to his bad mood.

Mycroft leaves, and Greg is far too wasted to wonder about that look that broke the smile on his face.

Three hours later he is basically comatose, and doesn’t half remember the black Cadillac he vomits in three times on the way home, or the hand on his back to steady him as he’s hauled up the stairs.


	4. Chapter 4

He’s got a standing invitation to Baker’s Street, though he’s never taken it up before now.

“No, no you definitely do not,” Sherlock denies before wincing. John smiles and pretends he didn’t just pinch the world’s only Consulting Detective hard on that soft spot on his side.

Sherlock sulks pointedly in a corner while John bustles about getting tea and locating tea cups that aren’t bloody and have nothing growing in them. It’s nice to see he’s settled in well, Greg thinks. “Was there something on your mind Greg?” John asks, and Sherlock rolls his eyes dramatically.

“Obviously he’s-“

“Sherlock.” John says, in what Greg has come to call his army voice. He doesn’t know what is going on between the two of them but something is, because Sherlock is immediately silent. Greg looks back and forth between the two. He’s no Sherlock Holmes, but the look on John’s face tells him that the doctor had fully expected to be obeyed and was not at all surprised by the acquiescence. 

Holy.

Shit.

Did John Watson…

The look on John’s face next was also very easy to interpret. He still had an easy, amiable look but there was an aura that very much meant that Greg should not question what just happened. 

He doesn’t.

John Watson took out a man with a handgun from a building across the street to save Sherlock’s life and walked away cool as you please. Whatever he and the pain in the arse are into, Greg wishes them both the best. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer man, is where he stands.

Instead Greg relates the oddness that’s been surrounding him lately. It started when he hit a red light last week and since then there’s been a persistent sense of wrongness. He feels distant and he knows that, while John is far from a psychologist, the man is a student of the human condition and could probably tell him why it was he felt so… disjointed.

He tells John about the cameras and the stoplights and strange Caribbean women cleaning his apartment, and clues and government files that mysteriously appear in his office and the weekly phonecalls where he tells Mycroft how much trouble Sherlock has been getting into. (Phone calls which, he notes, haven’t happened in about a month.)

About three minutes in, Sherlock starts twitching. John ignores it with the ease of long practice. Greg’s aware of it, since Sherlock is making absolutely no attempt at all to be subtle, but follows John’s example. Six and a half minutes later, and yes Greg timed it, Sherlock starts gagging theatrically. John’s smile is more than a little amused and honestly, so is Greg’s. Sherlock’s like a toddler at times, really.  
There’s a ten minute stretch where Greg is free to continue his story uninterrupted, but then Sherlock is on his feet and storming away.

“Excuse me,” he yells mockingly. “I need to go vomit violently.” There is a slam of a door and the sound of a truly spectacular fake gagging, and then a horrifying screech of someone mercilessly torturing a violin.

“Sorry about him.” John says, and he tries to look apologetic, he really does. He’s not particularly good at it. “I think the thought of his brother as human and dating is a little too much for his world view to bear.”

Greg sputters on his swallow of tea and chokes, sloshing it around inelegantly and getting some up his nose.

“I’m not dating Mycroft Holmes!” he cries when he can breathe again and when he has sopped up all the spilt tea from down his shirt.

John looks impossibly patronizing and sympathetic. “Yes Greg,” he says. “Yes you are.”


	5. Chapter 5

He has no idea how to get in contact with Mycroft, and he has to start thinking of him as Mycroft because apparently they’ve been dating for about a year and he hadn’t even realized. Talking to random CCTVs has done nothing but garner him strange looks and whispers, and while he’s fairly sure Mycroft is still tapping his mobile, the man isn’t answering. 

In a fit of desperation he strings up an old black shirt of his and hangs it like a flag in the window. Even odd shadowy members of the government would recognize the symbol for parley, wouldn’t they?  
Even with that it’s still a week before he has any contact. 

It’s three am and he’s about six doors down from his flat after an agonizing couple of days at work when the payphone on the corner rings. His exhaustion is almost immediately forgotten and he dashes to pick it up, startling a couple of pigeons who were roosting above it.

“Mycroft,” he half yells into the phone, and there is an odd, awkward pause. 

“Good evening Detect-“

“Where are you?” Greg says instead, cutting him off. He doesn’t give the man a chance to answer before he is peering around the neighbourhood, easily spotting the ominous black car idling across the street and down a spell. He rolls his eyes and hangs up the phone. One thing you have to say about Mycroft, he’s shit at subtle.

Greg marches up to the car and rips open the front door, clearly startling the man there. The man who is obviously not Mycroft Holmes. “Uh…” Greg says awkwardly. “Sorry.”

He marches to the back door and rips that open, and is rewarded with Mycroft and his sardonic raised eyebrow. “You,” Greg says, ignoring the look, “are an idiot!” He doesn’t allow Mycroft more than a few words of indignant protest before he has the man by his collar and is crushing their lips together.

It’s not the best kiss in the world. Mycroft was not expecting it, and Greg is bent at a strange angle and no one quite knew where their hands were supposed to go. It wasn’t a particularly bad kiss, but they would definitely need some practice.

“Alright look,” he says once they’ve broken apart. Mycroft is looking at him as if the sun is rising on his face and God save him from emotionally constipated man-children, Jesus. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to follow me inside right the fuck now and send your driver away. Tomorrow somewhere about noon you’re going to take me out for brunch and I will teach you proper dating etiquette if I have to jam it between your ears.”

He turns on his heel and marches across the road. At his door, he pauses while he fishes out his keys and shoots a look back across the road. “Well?” he says, and is satisfied at the scramble that follows his words.  
He’s got no idea what he’s bloody getting into, he knows. But, as they tumble through the door to his tiny flat, limbs and tongues tangled, one thing’s for sure.

It’ll be one hell of a ride.


End file.
